In the 1980s, the owner of Newsweek, Katharine Graham, reviewing plans to renovate the headquarters of the magazine, where I worked, questioned the necessity of private offices for the dozens of writers and editors. “I have a city room full of Pulitzer Prize–winners at The Washington Post,” she is rumored to have said. “Why does everyone here need a private office?”
If asked, I could have explained to Mrs. Graham that my infant son woke me most mornings at 5, and a city room was an extremely uncomfortable place to nap. But her question seems almost quaint today, as designers confront the paradox of the modern office, which has grown increasingly functional in its furnishings and materials, even as it is being pressed into service for uses never imagined by the early efficiency expert Frederick Taylor: as a substitute home for employees whose days seldom end at 5 p.m., as a statement of the organization’s environmental and social values, and, of course, as an amenity to attract talent to the company’s ranks.
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